precisely what
the leading Socialists have called "State Socialism."

A part of the working people, also, are disposed to subordinate their
own conceptions of what is just, in spite of their own better judgment,
to an exclusive longing for an immediate trial of this kind of State
benevolence. This is expressed in the widely used phrase, "every man to
have the right to work and live,"--employed editorially, for example, by
Mr. Berger, now Socialist Congressman. What is demanded by this
principle is _not a greater proportion of the national income or an
increasing share of the control over the national government, but the
"State Socialist" remedies, employment, and the minimum wage_. In its
origin this is the begging on the part of the economically lowest
element, a class which Henry George well remarks has been degraded by
poverty until it considers that "the chance to labor is a boon."

Some years ago the municipal platform of the Milwaukee Socialists said
that it must be borne in mind "that the famine-stricken is better
served with a piece of bread than with the most brilliant program of the
future" and that "in view of the hopelessness of an immediate radical
betterment in the position of the working class" it is necessary to
emphasize the importance of attaining "the next best."[71] Here again
was admitted complete dependence on those who own the bread and have the
disposition of "the next best" in political reforms. When capitalism is
a little better organized, the working people will be guaranteed "the
next best": steady work and the food, conditions, and training necessary
to make that work efficient--just as surely as valuable slaves were
given these rights by intelligent masters or as valuable horses even are
given care and kindly treatment to-day.

"A Socialist Social Worker" has published anonymously in the _Survey_ a
letter which presents in a few words the whole Socialist position as to
this type of reform. The writer claims that the very fact that he is a
social worker shows that even as a Socialist he welcomes "every addition
to the standard of living that may be wrested or argued from the
Capitalist class," since all Socialists recognize that "no
undernourished class ever won a fight against economic exploitation, but
that the more is given the more will be demanded and secured." But he
does not feel that the material betterments have any closer relation to
Socialism.

"The new feudalism," he says, "w